The Pirates defeated the Mets by the count of 14-2 (box score here) on Friday night in Pittsburgh. There’s an argument to be made it actually looked like a bigger blowout than that, too. The Pirates ended up hitting seven home runs, including two grand slams, while rookie starting pitcher Paul Skenes put together another outstanding outing.
We’ll start with the offense from the Pirates. As noted, they hit seven home runs — a season high for any team. The only other time this season a team has hit more than five homers came when the A’s hit six against the Marlins on May 4. For the Pirates’ franchise, this is the fourth time they’ve gone yard seven times, with the previous most recent time coming May 26 last season. They also hit seven homers in a game in 2003 and 1947.
The MLB record for team home runs in a game is 10, which the Blue Jays pulled off on Sept. 14, 1987. Ernie Whitt hit three homers while Rance Mulliniks and George Bell hit two apiece. But let’s get back to the 2024 Pirates.
The seven-homer outing included grand slams from Bryan Reynolds …
… and Rowdy Tellez:
Both players hit two homers in the game. Reynolds ended with six RBI, Tellez five. The other players to homer were Jack Suwinski, Michael A. Taylor and Yasmani Grandal.
On the other side, this tied a Mets franchise record for home runs allowed. They also allowed seven home runs in a game in 1967, 1998, 2017 and 2018.
All the Pirates’ offense in the late innings somewhat overshadowed another impressive outing from rookie sensation Skenes. He left the game with a 4-2 lead after working seven innings and allowing only two runs on four hits while striking out eight.
Through 10 career starts, Skenes is now 5-0 with a 2.12 ERA, 1.01 WHIP and 78 strikeouts in 59 1/3 innings.
